Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 1:31 PM
On Sunday evening Amanda and I headed to Wal-Mart for some errands and hoped to catch a 10pm showing of The Bourne Supremacy. I wish someone had told me I would have needed my passport. We rolled into the Wal-Mart parking lot at about 9pm and it was packed. Wal-Mart is apparently the place to be on a Sunday night. Not the place to be for people from my neighborhood, but the place to be for people who travel countless miles from god knows where to get to my local Wal-Mart. Does my local Wal-Mart offer something that their local Wal-Mart does not? There's no way the Niles Wal-Mart is the closest one to their home. If it is, I want to know where they live. Because it's nowhere near me. Before I even got past the 25 cent pop machines outside, I felt like I had traveled to a foreign country or got lost in a bad neighborhood. I hate to judge, but it was borderline scary. After perusing the endless aisles of entertainment and finally getting a chance to get around the very slow moving, Latino family of nine, we decided to check out the "Electronics" section. The cutting-edge electronics section provided us with our first dose of the English language since entering the store. We were lucky enough to catch the end of an Avril Lavigne video on one of the TVs, sweet relief. I started wondering if risking an aneurysm is really worth the savings? Shortly thereafter we were caught again, this time behind an Eastern European buying large garbage cans and wheeling them blindly down the aisles. We slowly arrived at the checkout line and luckily got in early on an express lane which meant a less painful wait time. As punishment for finding a quick line, our cashier was a real catch. I realize you work at Wal-Mart and probably hate the world and your life, but take it out on the cheeseburger you're going to house on your lunch break, not on me. Is there a secret backroom at Wal-Mart where they grease the wheels for the Naturalization process? I'm thinking yes because it sure felt like Ellis Island.
We left the Naturalization Center and headed for the closest local melting pot, the Crown Theater. We arrived a little early to try and snag a good seat...our mission was a success and that made me happy. What didn't make me happy was the large, again Eastern European, family that made a home in the row directly behind us about ten minutes later. Their 3-4 year old daughter quickly marked her territory with three swift kicks to the back of my seat while screaming something in her native tongue. Now I can't remember exactly what my bedtime was as a little tyke, but it sure as hell was before 10pm on a Sunday evening, even in the summer. Get a babysitter or make it a Blockbuster night Sergei; is she really going to understand the movie anyway? Turns out she understood quite a few parts. Yeah, the parts where the movie was set in Moscow and the characters were speaking in Russian. If we weren't up to reading the subtitles so generously provided for us, we could just listen to the translation team behind us. They really brought the movie to life for me. With four commercials prior to the movie telling people to turn off their cell phones, you'd think at least one of them would make you check your phone. Nope, again the Russians take measures into their own hands. The cell phone of a young Russian woman in the contingency behind us began ringing. The ring tone could have been their national anthem for all I know, but it rang forever. Then she answered it, and yes, starting talking on it. A normal conversation, hi, how are you, in the middle of a packed movie theater. Who does that? The last few times I've gone to see a movie the experience has gotten successively more painful. I was hoping to avoid these antics with a late, Sunday evening, showing. Mission failed. Consider this a warning.
Goodbye in Russian,
schrags